


With Love

by duelstance (valoirs)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 07:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8363683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valoirs/pseuds/duelstance
Summary: "I know who I was dancing for." The fingers drift away. Yuuri pushes himself up, eyes half-lidded, shifts a bit—and then they're close enough to breathe each other's air, noses brushing. "Do you?"





	

 

Celebrating, it seems, is the only natural course of action in the evening.

Victor's seen impressions of what the victory means in the expressive contours of Yuuri's face, the shine in his eyes, the telling slopes of his brows. He felt it in the near imperceptible tremble that ran along the length of the skater's spine as they'd stood together on the platform in the wake of the Hot Springs on Ice results, pressed close together. Yuuri had been warm then, fresh out of his performance, searing heat into Victor's side. It left a mark, something trailing tantalizingly at his peripherals, close enough to glimpse but not nearly enough to grasp.

They'd retreated to one of the smaller unoccupied banquet rooms available at Yu-topia for the night, basking in the warmth of the room and the scent of Hiroko's cooking. It had been his first time seeing Yuuri actually eat a pork cutlet bowl in spite of the dish's frequent presence. A well-earned reward, considering the events of the day and the training that led up to it. There had been something there, a languidness in the air as Victor had watched Yuuri fidget with his chopsticks, and in spite of Yuuri's visible nervousness, there had been a companionable atmosphere twined in the air.

He hadn't been able to resist trying to ply Yuuri with alcohol either, an action fueled by idle curiosity when Hiroko had cheerfully commented on her son's surprising tolerance as she brought out a few bottles. There'd been Yuuri's initial token resistance, naturally, then an unexpected quiet acceptance, and Yuuri's first glass had gone down slow. Then came the next, and then another, downed at increasing speeds. They'd lost count, after a while.

That was ten minutes ago, and now Victor's seeing the results of it, and it isn't quite a disaster.

Victor's long finished his own pork cutlet bowl, his chopsticks sitting on the edge, a few grains of rice scattered along the bottom. Makkachin slumbers quietly nearby, paw twitching every few seconds. The heater underneath the kotatsu hums softly, circulating warm air under the cover, and he props an elbow up onto the table to lean his chin into his open palm, pale bangs falling over his eye. He's never been terribly considerate when it comes to his staring. Not even now, as he traces the faint flush on Yuuri's cheeks and the way his eyes sit at half-mast, the look made all the more appreciable by his current lack of glasses. The frames sit forgotten on the table, having fogged earlier from the steam of freshly cooked food. Victor's long let his previous idle chatter drift into silence in favor of this—whatever this is.

It's only as he watches Yuuri gingerly pick up his last piece of pork cutlet and take a small bite out of it that he finally speaks again. If the extra note threaded in his voice could be heard as fondness, there's no one around to comment on it.

" _Yuuuuuuri,"_ he says, tilting his head, "I'm surprised. I thought you'd finish it more quickly, since it's your favorite."

There's a mumble, something that sounds suspiciously like _you distracted me_ , and Yuuri doesn't meet Victor's gaze as he finishes the last piece, chewing carefully, the action made a little sluggish by the alcohol no doubt circulating in his system. "It's been a while," he says finally, voice quiet. "I wanted to appreciate it slowly. But it tastes better when it's still warm anyway."

Victor smiles at that, lips quirking.

"I won't get another until I win again, will I?" Yuuri continues, frowning down at his bowl.

"No, you won't," Victor replies, voice sharpening just a fraction, nothing terrible noticeable but Yuuri tenses all the same. There's something satisfying in watching the way Yuuri's gaze, too, sharpens slightly, edged with determination. They'd found something in the past week, and something else today, if Yuuri's performance is any indication. Victor still remembers the full of it, has intentions to replay the recordings for proper critique, but for now he lets himself sit on the memory of the magnetism tangled so thoroughly with every motion Yuuri had made as he skated. The underlying grace of it, fueled by some moment of epiphany that must have come in the night. None of this energy had quite shone through in the previous day's practice.

Victor's been lured by curiosity for a long, long time. His own curiosity at the world, at himself. What he can show his audience, the extent to which he can surprise the world. This is no different, except now his curiosity has latched itself onto something decidedly specific.

"Then I'll have to win, won't I? I have to."

Victor smiles at that, a grin made more formidable for all its lack of flashed teeth. "I like that confidence," he says, meeting Yuuri's gaze, watching the undercurrent. "And it's not unfounded. But meeting my criteria enough to win this competition so I'll design a program for you is different from winning on a larger stage. You know this better than anyone."

"Yes," Yuuri breathes, and maybe that's when Victor sees a glimpse of it, another fraction of the real potential lying underneath when today's performance only skimmed the surface of it. More hidden away, locked beneath layers of frayed nerves. They would smooth those out with time, with patience, as Yuuri builds up his confidence.

"Good, good."

So he sits there watching indulgently as Yuuri reaches out for his sake cup again, the gesture languid and slow. The cup is full but Victor intervenes, extending a hand and curling careful digits over Yuuri's. Their fingers brush as Victor eases the cup away. "Yuuri," he chides almost affectionately, "you'll make yourself sick if you keep drinking."

He punctuates the sentence by downing the cup himself with a happy sigh, which only elicits a puff of laughter from the other skater.

" _You're_ going to get sick," Yuuri tells him, eyes half-lidded, looking vaguely drowsy but not nearly enough to actually drift off at the table. Not yet, at least. "You were up until dawn the other day drinking."

Victor decides he likes it when Yuuri pushes back just a bit, the way the alcohol loosens his nerves, lays to temporary rest the near-perpetual undercurrent of anxious energy always thrumming through Yuuri's veins. Yuuri is soft, pliant—but Victor's eyes aren't mistaken. There are edges wrapped away under the pliancy, ones that peek out when Yuuri taps into other sides of himself. They are neither more representative of him nor less, merely other facets.

 _If I could_ , Victor thinks, the thought drifting quietly on the fringes of his mind, _I would like to see them all._

Which raises another question, and he sidesteps Yuuri's admonishment with a simple smile, leaning closer to him. They're seated at adjacent sides of the table rather than opposite ones. Earlier, Minako had joined them, but the room is quiet now that she left to take care of several errands, and Yuuri's family is attending to other guests now that business is booming at Yu-topia with word of Victor's continued presence in Hasetsu. Yuuri leans in too as if drawn,  and they come scant centimeters from meeting as they crowd at the same corner of the table, knees knocking together under the kotatsu.

Victor runs through the same action from the other day, fingertips rising to graze slow and steady along the curve of Yuuri's lower lip. "No one knew your true eros, Yuuri, not even you," he says softly, the words intimate in the quiet room. "But you found it, didn't you? You showed it to me."

As if snapping out of a trance, Yuuri jolts at the touch. Surprisingly, he doesn't pull away, though his cheeks flush and he fidgets. "I did," he concedes, and his lips remain parted as if to say more, but he closes his mouth after a moment, waiting.

Victor catches a speck of sauce on Yuuri's lip with another pass of his thumb and idly rubs it between fingers, feeling the smear of it. "What were you thinking of?"

Yuuri flinches back at that, and they lose that point of contact. "N—nothing in particular," he stammers, voice tripping over the words.

"Nothing at all? Nothing you want to tell your coach, especially now that I'm really yours since you won?"

It happens in just a split second, Yuuri's mouth opening in surprise as if the reality of it all hasn't quite sunk in until now, not even when he told what was basically national television that they'd win the Grand Prix Final together. Then he flushes again, eyes bright, thrilled. "Well, I mean… I just…" He pauses a bit, worrying at a lip.

The laugh that emerges from Victor's lips is gentle, unjudging. It's all right. He's feeling indulgent tonight. "Okay, okay," he says. "Eros can just be a feeling. It doesn't have to be something you're actively thinking."

"No! That's not really it."

And Yuuri, nervous Yuuri whose nerves leave him a debilitated mess in the prelude to performances, Yuuri who throws himself clear across the room to avoid contact, shifts around the edge of the table, crowding into Victor's space until they're on the same side of the kotatsu. He stops short of leaning against Victor, but his hand settles on the sleeve of Victor's robe, clutching at the material, fingers curling into it and loosely bunching it. "That's not it," he repeats, radiating warmth in his sweater, leaning closer. "It's just more like…" His eyelashes flutter with a slow blink. Victor can catch the smell of the sake on his breath, this close.

"More like?"

"Both a thought and a feeling," Yuuri murmurs, drifting closer, palms shifting, coming to rest against Victor's arms. "It came to me when we were looking at the costumes, and I found the one from the Junior World Championship."

"Ah, that one. Did what I say give you inspiration?"

"Um, yes… It sparked an idea. In the narrative I imagined—" Yuuri sways slightly, pauses. Even with the alcohol he's consumed he has some kind of filter, and it seems to be working furiously if his embarrassed expression is any indication. "I'd been trying to fit myself into a mold I couldn't relate with completely. Giving chase, chasing… But I thought about it. I thought of the things I wanted, trying to channel them into my performance. 'On Love: Eros, sexual love. Pleasure followed by pleasure. One just drowns in it.'" To his credit he doesn't stumble as he recites it. "I thought of what I wanted, what I couldn't resist. If there was something I would fight to keep, instead of letting it slip away."

And Yuuri crowds further into Victor's space, leaning heavier against him, and they overbalance, sprawling in a mess of limbs. There's no trace of errant mirth on his face as Victor lies there, peering up at Yuuri, the way he's sprawled across Victor's lap, weight pressing warmly over Victor's thighs.  Yuuri keeps himself propped up by his arms, loosely caging Victor's shoulders, and he trembles even as he fails to move away.

Victor reaches up, smooths a hand over Yuuri's cheek, ghosts it along the skater's temple and up to his hairline so he can brush his bangs up in an idle mimicry of the hairstyle he'd had for the Hot Springs on Ice competition.

"If agape is selfless love, and these arrangements were opposing, then I thought…maybe in this context, another interpretation of eros is selfish love."

Yuuri's looking down at him, voice soft, their gazes locked, and Victor merely waits.

"So I thought… If there was something I wanted for myself, not for anyone else… Something I wanted to keep all to myself… A reason for me to dance, knowing it was my one and only chance…"

 _Ah_ , Victor thinks. There isn't something as clean as a revelation, but there's a click in his mind, like a piece falling into place. Pieces of a whole, and he has one fragment to build the rest of the structure from the ground up. Yuuri's voice is melodic, rhythmic as he speaks softly, so engrossed in encapsulating the thoughts rushing through his mind that he speaks as if in a daze, honest. But Victor knows better now, knows a certain artfulness is hidden in that unassuming frame.

Yuuri's arms tremble as he unceremoniously crashes down on top of Victor, eliciting low sounds of pain as their limbs knock together. He rests his cheek on Victor's chest. The blanket of the kotatsu rustles with the motions. Their legs intertwine loosely underneath the covers, socked feet toeing each other lightly as Yuuri nuzzles into him so gently he could have missed it, the action so faint it's as if Yuuri himself doesn't notice it.

There's a pulse hammering away against him, the beats like the thrum of a hummingbird's wings. His own heartbeat sits at a steadier tempo, calm, composed.

He could use this if he wanted to push further.

It would be so easy.

"And I thought, 'I don't want to give this up.'" A hand smooths up into the fabric at Victor's shoulder, clutching on for dear life. "'I don't want to lose this.'" It drifts further, curling loosely against the delicate skin of Victor's throat, where his breath catches in the seriousness of the moment, something heavy sitting between them, laced in shared air. "There hasn't been anything in my life I've wanted so much."

For a few seconds Victor doesn't breathe. _I could use this_ , he thinks, and his own pulse is starting to thunder underneath his breastbone as Yuuri buries his face in his chest, close enough to hear it.

"I thought, 'I want to win.' Because all my life, I always thought you were so far away. You're my idol. And to have you so close, offering to coach me. I thought I was dreaming. I never even imagined anything like this could happen. And then here you were, in the same town. In the same building. In the same room." Yuuri exhales slowly, inhales just as slowly, breaths measured but urgent in the way his voice betrays him, the way it shakes around the syllables rising from his throat. "If I lost, you were going to leave. You were going to go back to Russia. I didn't want that to happen."

The fingers brush up further, the situation mirrored this time as they settle lightly against Victor's lips, tracing as if to memorize every single contour. There's a guilt settling in his chest now, something heavy and vaguely regretful. Too soon—thoughts he shouldn't be privy to. Not yet.

"And I thought if there were some way to make you stay, I'd do it. Not for you, but for me. I understand agape from my family. Unconditional love. But I thought, if there were something I could be selfish about, it would be this."

Another pass of a thumb over his mouth, and Victor parts his lips a bit to let out a breath.

Yuuri lets out a low sound, almost like one of his usual laughs without the self-deprecation, and something in it sends a shiver along the length of Victor's spine.

"I…I had to keep reminding myself. That you came here all the way from Russia. For _me_. Because you saw my video and wanted to coach _me_. And…no one was supposed to see that, it was just supposed to be Yuuko, but. I'm—I'm glad her kids uploaded the video, even if I wanted to die at first. Because it brought you here. Maybe there was something in there that made you chase me here. And if you chased me here, I wanted to make sure you wouldn't want to leave."

"I know who I was dancing for." The fingers drift away. Yuuri pushes himself up, eyes half-lidded, shifts a bit—and then they're close enough to breathe each other's air, noses brushing. "Do you?"

A beat, their breaths mingling, faces so close Victor can feel the flutter of Yuuri's eyelashes against his skin, and somehow his own pulse settles. A calm falls over him, so soft and lulling he almost brings an arm up to curl around Yuuri's waist. "I do," he murmurs simply, a pair of private words meant for only one set of ears.

Yuuri blinks slowly, leans in just a bit more, as if the disbelief still has claws hooked into him, digging deep enough to bruise.

Victor smiles, and his next breath gusts out in a quiet sigh. Yuuri's leg brushes against his thigh as they shift, the warmth of the kotatsu tempting in its lure of comfort, the moment accented by the low hum of the heater. When he reaches up, it's to thread his fingers into the hair along the back of Yuuri's neck, but he pauses just as he presses a single fingertip to the skin, not nearly enough to simulate a legitimate touch but enough to elicit a silent shiver.

He stops then. Brings his hand back down, arm coming to a rest on the ground again.

"Yuuri," he says, the gentlest he's spoken the entire day, "you're drunk. You should get to your room and rest."

Yuuri blinks slowly, still dazed. "Oh… Yeah, um, I probably…" He rolls off right then, the action uncoordinated, legs knocking lightly against the underside of the low table, swaying as he winds up settling amidst the covers, eyes drooping slowly.

It's an endearing sight. Victor sits up, gets into a kneeling position, reaches out to settle his hands under Yuuri's knees and back to support his weight as he lifts him up as he gets to his feet, cradling him close. Yuuri's room isn't terribly far from this one. It's a short walk at best to get him situated, though getting the door open might be an issue.

Yuuri murmurs something unintelligible under his breath.

Victor smiles softly at him. _I could use this_ , he thinks, _but I won't. I won't._


End file.
